Lincoln Middle School D&D Club Newsletters (2009)

This week in random fun things I found out on the internet: The Newsletter of the Lincoln Middle School D&D Club.

If you recall my somewhat recent post about my history with D&D (if not, you can read it here), I got my first books when I was in middle school. Unlike the kids at Lincoln Middle, I didn't have a club to play with so until I got to high school, it was just me and these arcane rulebooks making up characters, studying the spell section like it was an actual spellbook, and using random tables to have solo dungeon crawls.

 

 

It looks like the club is mostly playing "original" Basic D&D, the same system I cut my teeth on way back when! The first newsletter does say they play other games and mentions Labyrinth Lord by name. LL is what they call a retro-clone or OSR (Old School Revival). There's quite a few systems out there now that emulate the OG D&D rules with some minor tweaks. While I pretty much understood the rules back then, if I were introducing middle schoolers to role-playing, I'd probably start with something a little less rules intensive.

 

I found these newsletters particularly interesting because they're a snapshot in time and, at the same time, timeless. If not for the dates listed on them, they could almost be from any time after 2007 when Labyrinth Lord was published. It seems like they're intended for GameMasters and players alike but there's also stuff in there that seems to be exclusively for GM eyes only. This also makes me curious about who ran the games. Were they teachers, students, a mix of the two?

 

Krull Coloring Book (1983)

 Today's post comes to you courtesy of Archive.org, where I found today's topic: a Krull coloring book from Marvel Comics! Marvel did quite a few coloring books back in the day and not just their own characters. They also did movie based ones and a few Dungeons & Dragons ones featuring characters from the LJN toy line.

 

Krull is one of my absolute favorite 80s fantasy flicks. Not only did thy cram in typical fantasy stuff like a Cyclops, Fire Mares, and a giant crystal spider but the bad guys were aliens with laser weapons. It was an odd mash-up for sure but that's why I love it.

 I did some poking around and it looks like there was one other coloring book and two coloring/activity books for Krull. At least that's all a quick search turned up. You can see the covers, and get digital versions, at Retro Reprints. A Puppy for Titch can be found in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

As you might guess by the title, A Puppy for Titch is not exactly a rip roaring adventure in the world of Krull but there are giant spider and Slayers. Due to the presence of Slayers, I would think this takes place somewhere off screen during the events of the movie. But Lyssa is in the story and Corwin meets the Cyclops. Who cares about continuity in a coloring book?

During my poking around, I also found that Alan Kupperberg did the pencils for the book. He was a comic artist and writer that worked on various issues in my collection including DC's Blue Devil and Fury of Firestorm, Marvel Tales, What If, Crazy and one of my favorite books at the time, Obnoxio the Clown vs the X-Men. You can read a scathing review of that book here. 

 

To be fair, I haven't read it in decades, who knows if I'd even still find it funny. It was probably a favorite because this early 80s X-Men team is my ride or die. They are what launched me into collecting comics.

Monthly Media Recap - July 2023

 

Streaming Series

 

Slasher: Flesh and Blood (S4, Shudder)

This go round has a dying patriarch gather his very dysfunctional family on his island home for a deadly competition to see who gets his inheritance. And just to make it more interesting, there's a killer on the loose.  Four seasons in, the storytelling is still fantastic and the kills are deliciously gory.

Marvel's Secret Invasion (Disney+)

Why wouldn't you want to see Sam Jackson in his own limited series? When it needs more episodes to dig into the story. I'm well versed in Marvel, even recently read the comics this is based on, and I still felt like I wasn't getting why they did this. I can't imagine how people that only follow the movies/shows are digesting this. Will we even see [spoiler] again and why'd they do [spoiler] dirty like that in this tiny series?

Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators

This was my weekend ritual when it was airing so this was a ton of fun to watch and catch up with the Gladiators. It was also really interesting to see all the behind the scenes stuff that was going on both with the show itself and the Gladiators' personal stories.